How the UK recycles millions of dirty old disposable coffee cups

You can now find out if GCHQ spied on you

People from around the world can join a campaign to find out if British intelligence agency GCHQ illegally spied on them -- and force it to delete the data.

The move follows a ruling by the UK's Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) that GCHQ's use of data gathered by the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US was unlawful prior to December 2014.

Advertisement

Following the ruling online rights charity Privacy International said it would ask the court to confirm if its own communications had been unlawfully collected. That legal request is now being extended to millions of people around the world.

The tribunal's ruling means that anyone can request the deletion of NSA records unlawfully shared with GCHQ. A short form on the Privacy International website asks people for their name, email address and telephone number to help find the data. Information collected by spy agencies includes emails, phone records and internet communications.

Read next

You can now make encrypted video calls with Signal

Ongoing sharing of data between the NSA and GCHQ is only legal as it has been partially disclosed by authorities. Prior to the disclosure GCHQ's access to NSA data was secret and thus unlawful.

The campaign will allow members of the public to find out how the Snowden revelations affected them personally and force GCHQ to delete illegally collected data. British citizens and people around the world can join the campaign to find out if they were spied on illegally by GCHQ.

Privacy International said it would collate the inquiries and submit them to the IPT, something that would be prohibitively difficult for individuals to do on their own. It cautioned that due to the complexity of the requests it might take months or even years for GCHQ to respond. Only data collected by the NSA and shared with GCHQ will be considered.

Advertisement

The ruling against GCHQ earlier this month was the first time the tribunal had ruled against the UK's intelligence agencies in its 15-year history. The case, brought by Privacy International and others, centred around GCHQ's access to information from the NSA's Prism and Upstream data collection tools.

The sharing of data between the NSA and GCHQ continues to give UK security services access to huge amounts of data. In one month alone the NSA's Upstream system created 160 billion interception records, while in one day the NSA collected nearly 700,000 email address books from Yahoo, Hotmail, Facebook, Gmail and others.

Privacy International, Bytes for All, Liberty and Amnesty International will soon lodge an application with the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the tribunal's December 2014 ruling that GCHQ's ongoing access to NSA data is lawful.